


Seven-Fold

by PersianPenName



Series: Angst Bingo 2020 Prompts [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (Crowley is Baby), (It's Crowley), Abel dies too but it's offscreen, Angst, Baby's first murder, Cain Dies, Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Didn't edit or beta because it's 3 am and I just want to post it, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I guess teen because death???, I never know what to rate things, Is it predestination or just assholery? Who knows!, Mercy Killing, angst bingo 2020, that's not a spoiler it's the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26265589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersianPenName/pseuds/PersianPenName
Summary: Years after Cain is exiled, Crawley helps him one last time.
Relationships: Crowley (Good Omens) & Qayin | Cain | Qabil (Abrahamic Religions)
Series: Angst Bingo 2020 Prompts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1908304
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: GO Angst Bingo 2020





	Seven-Fold

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Mercy killing/faking a death. I went with the former.
> 
> This pairs well with/is intended as a continuation of [a little drabble I wrote of Cr ~~o~~ awley and Aziraphale burying Abel.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267103/chapters/63535102) Will I continue with this saddest of all timelines? Your guess is as good as mine.

Cain lives a long time.

Crawley follows him, as he travels. There  _ are _ other humans, as it turns out, and Cain falls in with one group of them for a while, then another. Sometimes they convince him to try and till the soil despite his protests, despite his warnings, but every tree he tends withers, every seed rots instead of sprouting.

_ (Crawley remembers quiet mornings, a gentle hand running over the lines of wheat, heads heavy and almost ready to harvest. He remembers grubby hands holding up misshapen tubers with pride. Remembers leaves of mint and basil crushed between fingers and held up to him to smell) _

They find other work for him, eventually. Other things he can put his hands to, stone and brick to stack, mortar to crush and lime to slake, as though stones and crushing are all his hands are fit for now. He builds granaries, gates, cities. They value his skills, the other humans, but they do not like him, the twin tenets of the Curse and the Mark makes him a danger to them. He bears it as long as he can before moving on, always moving on.

There is a wife, eventually. Children, eventually. They seem to get on well enough, though this time Crawley does not approach the young family, does not have a place by the fire and the table, does not tell stories of the stars or rock small bodies that are too  _ tired _ to fall asleep. Does not get too close. Does not dig another hole in the sand and the earth when a child sickens and does not get better, when it sleeps and does not wake. 

It’s the stone that does it, in the end. Cain is old, his hands knobbly and rough with a lifetime of hard use, deep lines around his eyes. He is hammering at a line of wedges, trying to split one piece of rock from another as he’s done hundreds of times, but this time it fails, it cracks, it falls.   
  
It takes four men to move it off of him, when they finally get close enough that the shame makes them help. They don’t want to be cruel, Crawley knows, but they are  _ afraid _ . What if they shift it wrong? Will it count as harming him? Will they bring doom upon themselves seven-fold by one act of kindness, or should they save themselves through one act of cowardice? They remove the stone, but do not move him. A touch could cause pain, and he is already dying.

Crawley is late upon the scene.  _ (He’d been following a pair of children, the great-granddaughters of Eve, as they walked beside the river. The smaller one asks questions, the bigger one spins thread and stories; they are his favorites of all Cain’s brood.) _ He sees the workers surrounding a dark stain in the grass, hears the sobs and strange, wet, gurgling breaths. Crawley knows a lot about stars, but not about this, about bodies. He doesn’t know how to fix this. This is the closest to Cain he has been since a demon and an angel buried a broken child in the sand, but his eyes are the same, and they know him.   
  
“Please”, he says. “Please, I want to go home.”

The workers will not help him. Crawley wonders if the Almighty knew what it would mean, when She laid Her hands on him and said  _ any that harm you, will reap that same harm upon themselves seven times over. _ Did She know that it would lead to this, an old man drowning in his own blood, those watching too afraid of Her to offer him this final piece of mercy?

Crawley is not afraid, not of this. Not of Her. The worst has already happened to him, and it’s not like he can fall  _ twice, _ or even seven times. He’s afraid because unlike the old man before him, his hands have never shed blood. He ran and hid during the War in Heaven, has managed to talk his way out of trouble several times on earth, shown his eyes or his wings or simply flown away when talking wouldn’t suffice.   
  
“Help me, Crawley”, says Cain, and a knobbled hand raises to take his own.  _ Help me, Crawley: A child is pointing up, at a basket of sweets placed high on the shelves, too high for him to reach. Help me, Crawley: A youth is climbing a date palm, ready to sever the bundles of hanging fruit and send them into a demon’s waiting arms. Help me, Crawley: A young man is arranging his best vegetables, his sweetest fruits, for the altar. Help me, Crawley: A young man is dragging his brother home, blood splashed over them both. _

Crawley helps him, as he’s always done. He cups Cain’s cheek in his palm, holds him against his chest like he was that child once more. Kisses the crown of his head. His hand moves lower, to Cain’s throat, thin fingers stronger than any human’s wrap around it. He’s seen Eve snap the necks of birds for supper. He tries to be as fast as her, as hopefully painless.

~~ At least he’s with his brother now. ~~

  
  
  
  
  


_ Later, much later, he will learn how wrong he was. It turns out She has ways to hurt him after all. The pain is more than seven-fold. _


End file.
